‘Women in History’ program set for Saturday in Freeland

These are the historical female figures that the American Association of University Women Whidbey Island Branch are celebrating with their annual “Women in History” program at 10 a.m. Saturday, March 9, at St. Augustine’s in the Woods Episcopal Church in Freeland at their branch meeting.

The program, set during Women’s History Month, is created for the island’s fifth-grade students and will be performed for Coupeville, Oak Harbor and South Whidbey students, coordinator Sarah Mackaman said.

The purpose, she said, of it is to present information about women the students may never heard of.

The presentations run about 15 minutes long and feature a variety of notable figures, including fossil hunter Mary Anning, aviator Emily Post, novel laureate Wangari Muta Maathai and cartographer Marie Tharp, played by Mackaman.

“Women in this time weren’t going to be taken seriously,” she said of Tharp.

But Tharp persevered in her work, she said, and is finally earning the recognition she deserves as someone who drafted the first comprehensive map of the ocean floor.

Mackaman chose to portray Tharp because she’d came across an article by the New York Times discussing her; she found Tharp intriguing.

She said she also thought the subject would be interesting to both boys and girls in their audience.

The presenters don costumes as accurate as possible in the program that’s been a annual tradition for at least 15 years, Mackaman said.